Is a Google Executive Headed for Jail?

Warning

California Labor Code § 1102 requires that “no employer shall coerce or influence or attempt to coerce or influence his employees through or by means of threat of discharge or loss of employment to adopt or follow or refrain from adopting or following any particular course or line of political action or political activity.” Furthermore, the “whistleblower” provisions at §1102.5 prohibit employers from adopting rules preventing disclosure of, or retaliating against an employee for having disclosed, “information … to a person with authority over the employee, or another employee who has authority to investigate, discover or correct the violation … if the employee has reasonable cause to believe that the information discloses a violation of state or federal statute, or a violation of or noncompliance with a local, state, or federal rule or regulation, regardless of whether disclosing the information is part of the employee’s job duties.”

The memo in question quite plausibly falls into both statutory sections — advocating that someone “stop alienating conservatives” sure sounds like political activity, and warning of corporate policies and procedures “which can incentivize illegal discrimination,” and asking that the employer cease “restricting [certain] programs and classes to certain genders or races” sure sounds like information which an employee would have “reasonable cause to believe” concerns noncompliance with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.

Even better: Somebody could go to jail for this.

Section 1103 provides: “An employer or any other person or entity that violates this chapter is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable, in the case of an individual, by imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed one year or a fine not to exceed one thousand dollars ($1,000) or both that fine and imprisonment, or, in the case of a corporation, by a fine not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000).